2020: Will Berkshire continue getting deals without Buffett and Munger?
Becky Quick: This next question is for Greg and it comes from a shareholder named Todd Flaska.
He says, “I don’t expect Berkshire to outperform the S&P500 during good times. However, I remain a long-term investor because of the huge war chest that can be deployed during the downturns in the market, like we’re seeing right now. Warren has been brilliant at negotiating mutually favorable deals with companies that have somewhat urgent capital needs during these down-times. These opportunities may only come about once a decade. There’s a small window of time for these deals. They all come at once and you don’t really know if you’re at the bottom of the market when the deals start coming. Will Berkshire be able to continue this approach when Warren and Charlie are no longer at the helm?”
Greg Abel: I fundamentally, without Warren and Charlie at the helm, I don’t see the culture of Berkshire changing. I don’t see our billet, which a large part of that is having the business acumen to understand, the transaction, the economic prospects and then, the ability to act quickly. I really don’t see that changing as we… Well listen, there’s no one better than Warren and Charlie, but equally we’ve got a talented team in Berkshire both at the Berkshire level, and within our managers that can obviously look at opportunities too, very quickly. But, the reality is it’s a huge advantage we have right now, and we would clearly want to be in a position to maintain that position of strength. Warren?
Warren Buffett: Yeah, we will maintain it. And, we not only have it when the managers of the… In some cases, not all cases by a long shot, but in some cases we have managers that will occasionally come up with something that can be quite attractive. But between Greg and Todd and Ted, we’ve got three extraordinarily good buyers in terms of allocating capital and, I and Charlie may get an occasional call because of someone we knew 20 years ago or something. But they know a lot more people. They’ve got a lot more energy and their minds work the same way as ours have in the past. So I think it could very well be a significant improvement when the three of them are thinking about capital allocation, than when Charlie and I are now. Particularly now that he’s found zoom.